Sam's Cautionary Tale of Turning Into A Chick
by crackers4jenn
Summary: The tale about what happens when you accidentally piss off a vengeance demon.
1. Chapter 1

"Dude, that was the _sickest_--"

"Shut up, Dean!"

"I haven't even started to say anything! ...Samantha."

"_Dean!_"

"Oh, c'mon, man. You just went to Tranny Town and back, you think I'm not gonna have some fun with that?"

"It was a spell."

"A highly, _highly_ amusing, _God_-why-didn't-I-bring-a-camera spell, one that I like to think was crafted by some divinely ethereal being for yours truly."

Sam rolls his eyes, but, yeah, he's totally smiling too. "Whatever," he says, and it's only partially defensive.

"So." Dean taps his fingertips against the steering wheel. "What was it like? Did you cop a feel--" The obligatory side-glare towards his little brother-- "_Tell me_ you copped a feel."

"Do you know how utterly gross that is?"

"What!? You had _boobs_."

Sam slumps into the seat, his head lolling towards the window. All pitiful and full of bad, bad visuals and memories and _oh God_, that time he had to pee like a girl. As a girl. He barely gets out a, "Don't remind me," one that wavers from the rising bile.

It only takes two seconds. Two friggin' seconds, and then there's a low, steady chuckle, one that, all of a sudden, explodes into a loud, deep laugh. And then: "_You had boobs_."

"Dean..."

Dean just smiles at Sam, blissfully unaware of--oh hell, who are we kidding--totally, intuitively aware of Sam's misery, but not really caring about it. "They were perky, too," he jokes. I mean, yeah, he did obviously check out the merchandise, but it's not like he catalogued bounceability or cupsize or any gross thing like that.

Much.

"You know, one of these days something like this'll happen to you--"

"Nah. Never gonna happen."

"Oh, it will," Sam decides, sitting a little straighter. It's like the hope of wishful retaliation gives him a bit of bravado. "Karma's a bitch, believe me. And when it does--"

"Cut the foreboding crap. You'll, what? Laugh at me? Big friggin' deal."

And little Sammy slumps back against his seat again. He's practically channeling his inner-four year old as he pouts, "It'll suck."

"I'm sure it will."

That gets the eyeroll. "You're demented."

"Yeah," Dean easily agrees, "but at least I'm pretty."

***

(2 Days Earlier)

"Ohhhhhh, yeah. Who's your daddy? Hmm, baby?"

Dean shifted the laptop from its perched spot on his lap, hoping to get more comfortable. They'd found a decent motel in the middle of Sandy Hook, one where, at least, the front desk dude didn't raise too high of an eyebrow when Keith Moon and his kid brother showed up for lodging.

Just then, the motel door opened and a disheveled looking Sam walked in, a bundle of paper clutched close. "I think I found something," he said by way of greeting, shutting the door behind him and tossing his jacket onto the bed he'd earlier claimed, the one currently unoccupied.

"Mmmmhmm," was Dean's reply. He didn't take his eyes off the computer.

"There's been all these odd occurrences around town lately. Guys going missing, false identity reports. And get this: according to the local historian, this has been happening for _centuries_. Dean?"

"Yeah. That sucks. I hate it when that happens."

"Are you even listening?"

Dean finally looked up at that. "Yeah, yeah, I'm list--ooh!" His eyes strayed back to the laptop where pleasant, _very_ nice things were happening on-screen. "Jeanine, you naughty little cheerleader, you."

Sam was staring. Dean only had the peripheral view to confirm this, but, yeah, Sam was totally staring. And gaping. "You're looking at _porn_?" he said, flat out disbelief.

"Please, Sam. Don't insult my vertu. This is an adult education film."

"It's _porn_."

"Fine, it's porn. But it is _hot_."

After a moment to get the gaping under control, Sam rolled his eyes and flung what he'd been carrying at Dean. Several wadded up magazines took a direct course towards their intended target, coming loose of their synchronized formation at the end so that one wacked Dean in the forehead, the others landing like pillowed punches at his chest and arm.

"Hey!" Dean shouted, more annoyed at having his movie interrupted by his lanky, doofus brother than being subjected to a launched magazine attack. Then he got a good view of the magazines. They were the good kind--the _Local Cow Gives Birth to Alien Baby_ kind. "You brought me trashy magazines?! Oh, Sam. You shouldn't have."

"I didn't. Look at the cover."

Dean did. "Local Cow--"

"No," Sam noisily interrupted, impatient little sigh to back it up. "In the corner. Geez, Dean. There are all these stories about guys going missing--"

"Yeah, yeah. False identities. I heard all that. What's this have to do with us?"

"Okay, but what does it say?" Like an excited puppy who just got a whiff of some bacon-wrapped doggy treat, Sam started bounding towards Dean and the bed Dean was sprawled out on. "These guys," he said, pointing at some ragged, depressed looking dude on the cover, "they literally go away, sometimes for days. Their families fill out 'missing person' reports, news cameras show up, the town goes nuts with publicity--it's a pretty big deal."

"Uh-_huh_," Dean replied, staring skeptically. Under the picture of one of the men was the caption _They turned me into a woman!_ in frantic, bolded letters. "Lemme guess: Our boy Stan was here all along--just as Jan?"

"These people, Dean, these _guys_, they go through this physical transformation--"

"Dick to chick. I got ya. So it's a lifestyle choice that people are having trouble coping with, so the dude, or... lady-dude, he sells his sordid story to the presses, makes a pretty penny, and in the process pisses off his estranged family. Sounds nice."

"Not exactly. Dean, these guys turn _back_. It's not some surgery, or whatever. It's like complete and total gender-swapping. And eventually, not always, they just... manifest back to normal, like nothing ever happened."

"Riiiight. Does this thing--this _now you see it, now you don't!_ thing--is it just men, or do women get a little taste of the better life, too?"

Sam shrugged, flipping through the magazine pages. "So far, everything's shown to be conclusive to the fact that--it's _just_ men."

"So we have ourselves a very specific kinda hellspawn, then." A pause, a thoughtful tilt of the head. "Hey, you think it's some vengeful, man-hating ice-bitch from the beyond the grave? Y'know, her boyfriend cheated on her, boo-hoo, now she's gonna have herself a little fun by turning all the men into women? Some kinda _taste my pain!_ wrath only a chick would come up with?"

"I don't know. Maybe. You ever heard of 'As above, so below'?"

"Do the drapes match the carpet?"

"It's an ancient adage, Dean." He pointed to a place in the article he'd flipped to. "And these guys seem to repeat it. A lot."

***


	2. Chapter 2

By the time they'd scoped out the third haunt, weariness was starting to settle, and it was settling pretty damn thinly. Usually that served as sign numero uno that they needed to close shop and trek on home, wherever home happened to be that night, because with weariness usually came Sam's pissy little whiny moods, which Dean never had the patience for, never mind the odd number of hours they'd been on a hunt.

As usual, each turned over stone turned up squat. And they'd already been going on nothing, except Sammy Boy's never-ending gut instinct. Hell, even with the nitty-gritty picked through down to the last detail, the loads of documented history, the existential proof, Dean still couldn't swallow the facts. I mean, they'd dealt with a lot of unbelievable crap their whole lives. _A lot_. Unusual, straight out messed the hell up, plain friggin' weird. You name it, they'd wrassled it into submission. But this? This was taking the cake. Gender-swapping. Unbelievable. What next? Full-on stealing scripts from Jerry Springer?

"I'm drawing the line at 'My Mom Stole My Midget Boyfriend'," Dean said, fed up. Of course, Sam had no clue what Dean was talking about.

"What?"

"Jerry Springer? Which, I don't know if you happened to open your lids any time lately and take a look around you, we're straight up living an episode out of. I'm not doing the 'My Mom Stole My Midget Boyfriend' thing, if that's where you're heading next."

Sam just looked lost. "I'm not."

"At least there's that," Dean muttered, kicking at some dry pieces of rubble. Haunt number three also happened to be the obligatory abandoned old building, which was admittedly a step up from the typical abandoned asylum that, so far, they'd managed to avoid. This one used to be some kind of factory. You know, dozens of little worker bees lined up along a conveyor built, gluing together a bunch of useless crap nobody buys. Eventually some dude sticks his hand in the no-touch part and gets it whacked off, thus the eventual downfall of the company. Vacancy comes next, because why re-build when you can just shrug off your corporate coil and invest in some bonds and stock?

Anyway, the building had more history than just its most recent of assembling whatever it was that used to get fed down the conveyor belts, because the EMF meters were off the charts. The thing was belting out a tune that hadn't let up for more than a handful of footsteps since they'd entered the place. Hot spots all around and plenty enough paranormal activity to give Scooby wet dreams.

And yet...

"I'm not feeling anything," Sam said, frowning. He was like a built-in OnStar, except less with the useless direction-giving and more with the demon-finding. Plus he came cheap.

"Yeah. Me neither. So, we blowing this popsicle joint?"

Sam was squinting into the shadows. Same ol' confused face he used to wear when they were kids, when Dean's bedtime stories eventually started drifting away from Mother Goose and towards Brother Grimm.

Figured that that's about the time they heard a noise--a piercing, hollow scream--echo throughout the building, which wasn't very large to begin with. Two stories, but they'd already covered the second floor and most of the first, with nothing turning up.

"You hear that?" Sam asked, peering into the darkness, already back in _hey, let's keep investigating this stupid old factory_ mode.

Dean frowned. Son of a bitch. "Yeah," he said, "I heard it." Shoving the EMF meter into a back pocket--let's face it, the thing was about as useful as Sam under the hood of a car--he double-handed his gun and set forward. "What do you think it was?"

"I don't know. What did it sound like to you?"

Dean thought back on it. It'd been a shriek, this inhuman wail that bounced off the walls. He didn't answer, saying instead, "Salt rock?"

He could see Sam pulling rank alongside him, see that half-grimace he was wearing. "I guess."

They hadn't figured out what the hell to blast this beastie into the next world with, but the general consensus was that they'd shoot and learn. Either the thing was a mystical, supernatural force that went bye-bye with a shot of some salt rock, problem solved, or they moved onto Plan B. Which was currently still in blueprint form, but a rough idea, so they'd previously discussed before they'd set out that morning, was that they'd book it and run.

Stepping around a box of god-knows-what, Dean raised his gun. That part came easy. The hunt. Staring down some damn ugly spook with nothing but a shotgun and some salt rocks, Sam taking the corners heavy a step behind him. And it was a hell of an adrenaline rush, knowing that some big bad Casper could come flying out of nowhere at any given moment, ready to pounce and suck the life out of you.

Another noise, this one different from the first. It wasn't a scream, wasn't anything like that at all. Sounded more like a clap of thunder, and the sound scrambled down hallways towards them.

"Show-off," Dean grumbled.

They made their way slowly, carefully, eyeballing every shadowed corner, every nook and cranny, until a large, wide room opened in front of them. Even with barely adequate lighting, the place looked trashed, like it'd ended up being a squat house for the vagrants. Beer cans littered the floor in piles of varying sizes, fast food wrappers, cigarette butts.

"Looks like someone forgot to pay the cleaning crew," he said, stepping over an exposed needle. Not only did the place make his skin crawl, it reeked.

"Yeah," Sam said on a exhale of air.

And then the ground started to shake. Dean shared a confused, _what the hell?_ look with Sam, then glanced around. The infrastructure was giving way. Pieces of the ceiling were falling in vinyl-sized chunks around them, heavy and with no sense of order. Dust scattered like hell itself was chasing at its heels, making the air thick and cloudy. Dean coughed into his shoulder, glaring through the haze that was starting to form. What was that post-war, nuclear bomb crap they were always telling you to do--head for the exit, stand huddled in the doorframe because that was the strongest part of the building?

"Sam!" he called out, and Sam was still behind him, coughing and swatting away at the pissed off cloud of now majorly in motion debris. The EMF meter in his pocket had quit its song just about the time the shaking took place, which meant that whatever it was, what it _wasn't_ was some temperamental poltergeist having itself a fit.

They needed to get out of there, before 'there' became a giant, overly-industrialized coffin for the two of them. He turned to start running, his eyes burning, when--

A bright flash of light took up his whole vision, this literal force that pushed him off his feet and to the ground, and he thought as he fell, _Sammy!_

Then the light was gone. The rumbling stopped. The last piece of dry wall crumbled to the ground with a wood-on-concrete slapping sound and an atomic mushroom explosion of dust. Birds damn near chirped in the distance, but otherwise silence settled, and settled fast and hard, like it'd been that way all along.

Dean rolled to his side with a groan. His ribs ached and there was a dull throbbing where something hard had socked him in the gut, but a quick mental run-down from the toes up turned up no other injuries.

"I almost died in an earthquake," he muttered disbelievingly to himself. "I'm in Kentucky, and I almost died in a friggin' earthquake. If that's not a sign we shouldn't be here, I don't know what is."

Beside him, Sam started to stir. He was face-down, but his pants-covered legs started doing that dreaming-puppy slow-motion running thing. Dean stifled a relieved sigh and said, "Sam? You okay?"

A groggy moan was his answer, followed up with some more leg-flopping. Then Sam full-out crocodile rolled from his back to his side, gasping and sputtering, and what, _who_ Dean saw where Sam should've been made everything in him _stop. _Fear trickled through his body lightening quick, chased by anger--white, hot, blinding anger that made him recoil with rage.

Dean was on his feet, fast. The shotgun that'd earlier been dropped to the ground when the shaking started was in his hands before he'd even had both legs planted, and he shouted, "Where's Sam?" at the non-Sam _thing_ lying where his kid brother should have been. That wasn't him. Took all of two seconds and a good, unobstructed view of the body lying beside him for him to realize it, but, yeah, that was most definitely not Sam. That was a shape-shifter, a demon, some ghost looking to get it's Patrick Swayze on--_something_, but it wasn't Sam.

It groaned, blinking and blinking, its body stiff like it was waking up to one truly horrendous hang-over. "Dean?" it said, but staring up at the ceiling, still blinking.

Dean could feel his control skidding away from him. He gripped the gun harder, tried like hell not to let his trigger-happy trigger finger slip too soon. "Not gonna ask again, Princess. Where," he growled, "is Sam?"

The thing started to sit up. "Did you hit your head when you fell down?" it asked, and by now it was almost all the ways to. It was looking at him. The fact that it was staring down the barrel of a pretty damn impressive gun finally seemed to hit it in one long, shocked gasp of air. "Dean," it said, holding up a passive, peace-making hand, "what are you doing?"

There was something about that voice that was familiar. No, not the voice. The tone. The way certain parts of words jumped out, how they knocked into each other, almost clumsily. Dean was looking at a girl still half-sprawled on the floor, he was looking at some _chick_ with too-big eyes and squared, bony shoulders, but he was seeing--

"Sam?" His grip on the gun relaxed.

"What the hell is going on?" it said, in that Sam-voice again. "What are you do--" And then it, _Sam_, oh, Jesus, heard itself. The decidedly soprano tone and, yeah, Sam hitting puberty had been a spectacle to be seen, that adorable little high-pitched drawl he had, but this was something altogether different. It hit Dean the same time that it apparently hit Sam, if the sudden way he sucked in a deep breath and bolted backwards, wide-eyed, was any indication.

"No, no, no," Sam was muttering to himself. _Her_self.

A second ago, laying down and still swimming in the land of the mostly dazed, Dean had noticed that the lump of limbs next to him equaled in length what Sam did, but where Sam was sort of lanky, this Sam had been gangly. Too skinny, not so broad, even flat on its back. And the hair. That tipped him off first. Sam had that preppy, college-boy shag that every 20-year old kid who watched MTV and jerked off to the crap that it played wore, a haircut you couldn't summon enough money in the world to get on Dean's head, but this was long; too long, tumbling down those flat, angular shoulders.

Dean would've laughed, if he didn't feel so damn sick to his stomach.

Sam looked up at him, eyes terrified. "Dean--what--?"

"Dude," he managed, shaking his head and putting his gun down, "you look like a lady."

And that's when Sam started to scream.


	3. Chapter 3

There were a lot of things Sam found disturbing about being a woman, and the twenty-seven minutes he'd so far spent categorized as such gave him the experience to start mentally ticking off a list. He felt bloated. His ankles were too small. No matter what he wore or how he sat, he couldn't get comfortable. And that was just the short list, the list, it should be noted, that didn't include the anatomical, uh, proportional-related discomforts. Or (and here Sam flinched and re-thought the splayed way in which he was sitting) the lack thereof.

"Dude." Dean was glaring at him from over the top of a stack of research books now that they were back in the confinements of the motel. Okay, so it wasn't really a stack, more like three books piled in an uphill manner on top of each other. Go figure, but there weren't really a ton of books on the subject of magical gender-swapping. "Quit fidgeting," he said.

Sam gave back his own glare. Dean had been full of all sorts of helpful suggestions twenty-four of these past twenty-seven minutes. Don't panic. Stop screaming. Quit flailing. Hell, Dean would be fetal right now if it was _him_ in this position. He'd probably be locked in the bathroom, doing--ungodly things to himself, come to think of it, because he was _Dean_.

Dean must've sensed something, for once, because he said more peacefully, "We'll figure it out. We'll, I don't know. We'll call--" Then he broke out into laughter and the whole somber effect was ruined. "I can't take you seriously when you look like that, I can't."

Sam snared the digital alarm clock off the stand between the beds and tried to fling it at Dean. Even with him putting everything he had into it, which was pretty damn a lot, it only landed a handful of feet away, near a pile of discarded clothing. The aim had been wide. It wouldn't have even hit Dean, it would have hit the wall ten feet away from where he was sitting.

Dean only chuckled, while Sam tried to reel in the _Why Me?_'s ready to spill out of him.

Twenty-eight minutes in. Death would have been better.

------------------------------

"Oh, I'm deathly serious here," Dean said into the phone. Sam could hear Bobby's voice on the other end, but it was muffled, like how he used to hear Dean and Dad arguing from the next room over when he was little. It had that same barking quality to it. No doubt Bobby was fighting with the reality of the situation, needing to be convinced, because, frankly, this was the most absurd thing--

"Bobby says you're an idiot," Dean announced.

And then again, maybe not.

Sam rolled his eyes--like he didn't _know_ he was an idiot--and readjusted his shirt. Things were... floppy... down there, which was the only way to describe it. And kind of itchy, and while he knew that women wore bras, no way in hell was he going to be doing that, ever. His... whatevers, down there... they could flop and itch and bounce 'til the cow's came home, for all Sam cared.

His boxers made everything sort of breezy, too.

Oh god, okay, enough. He couldn't sit there and keep obsessing over things, mentally cataloging brand new body parts. All that was amounting to was upping his insane to sane ratio, and right now he didn't need to slowly crack, he needed to stay keen and sharp and, and--diligent.

But seriously, was it supposed to be that itchy?

Dean was still talking to Bobby, unaware of Sam's problems. "So, witches brew? Eye of newt? That sorta thing?"

Sam let out a pathetic sigh. Why didn't Dean ever get the tail end of a bad luck charm or a spell with some serious evil intent? It wasn't because he was any better at what they did--please, no _way_ was he any better. Definitely wasn't a sky-high pile of karma points, either. So, what gives? The rabbit's foot, being some jokesters punchline in a repeat-o, endless loop of _Groundhog Day_ gone wrong. There had to be some greater force out there, someone with a truly sick sense of humor, because--

"Well, this should be interesting."

Dean had hung up with Bobby and he looked almost cheerful, which inspired a sense of hope within Sam. "What did Bobby say?"

"That you shouldn't roam freely without a leash on, or at least some kinda talisman to keep things like this from happening to you, 'cause let's be honest with ourselves here. Things like this happen to you a lot. Seriously, you're like a giant freak magnet."

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He wasn't a kid. He didn't need a lecture or a stern but lovable discipline approach. "What else?"

"The usual. He wanted to know how big your--" A crude gesture towards the chest area, "were."

Sam nearly sputtered in horror. "Dean!"

"I'm kidding! Lighten up. Besides, I'm embellished on your behalf, so a little gratitude would be nice. You're, what? A? B? _Definitely_ not anywhere in the C-range, that's for sure."

Sam stared, lost, until realization filtered through. Confusion was filled with shock, which almost instantly slid into horror and disgust. "I hate you," he managed over the rush of nausea.

Dean smirked. "Ah, who are you kidding? Under that rough-and-tough attitude, you're nothing but a big ol' softie."

"So how do we fix this?"

"Well, first things first. You fretting is off the list."

Honest to god, he could clock Dean right now--if he wasn't so sure he'd probably only end up swatting at thin air, or, worse, just bruising his knuckles and leaving Dean injury-free. They weren't big and square and the size of quarters any more. They were kind of soft, actually. Disturbingly. And where did all the hair go?

"Right," Dean said. "Well, while you sit there and stare at your hands, which, by the way, is friggin' _weird_, I'm gonna go find some me some chum. Later."

Sam nearly gaped as Dean started for the motel door. "You're serious? I'm..." A horrified gesticulation towards himself, one that turned the tips of his ears pink, "and all you can think about is _food_?"

Dean gave him the courtesy of halting in his forward movement, but all the same he looked defensive, almost annoyed. "I'm hungry, so?"

"So," Sam echoed back, "I think you can forgo your impression of a human garbage disposal until we figure out how to change me back."

Dean waved a hand. "Already figured."

"And?"

"And, don't worry about."

"Don't worry about?!" He realized his voice, while already freakishly, alarmingly high and so unlike his own, reached octaves at the end there they were probably hearing the next three rooms over, but he couldn't help it--it's like sane, rational thinking had depleted itself of all natural resources within him, and all he was left with was this panicked, wholly screwed sense of reality.

Feeling trapped, claustrophobic, Sam surged upwards, out of his chair. "Easy for you to say!" he shouted, feeling himself slipping. "You're not the one out of their mind, here, you're not the one going nuts," and he laughed a little hysterically. "Who knows, maybe I am crazy. Maybe I'm so crazy I'm dreaming this whole thing up--"

"Oh, no, it's real, believe me. Want me to write about it in your journal for you? You know. Secondhand account, all that good stuff to make it sink in."

That just made him tired. He couldn't even muster up any more outrage, a sigh. "I'm _serious_."

"So am I." And then Dean was heading for the door again. "You coming or what?"

***


	4. Chapter 4

Dean was finding it hard to eat, which was disturbing on so many levels. Normally an avid fan of the charred cow internals, he couldn't seem to swallow what he'd bitten off. Something that probably had to do with the fact that, over his view of the hamburger still held up to his mouth, was his brother Sammy, who, it just so happened, had long brown hair, engaging brown eyes, and, oh yeah, boobs.

He forced the food down with something of a Herculean effort, and the resulting bile that rose, that was pushed back down as well.

Sam, for his part, was slumped over in the booth, looking for all the world like a kicked, lost little puppy. As far as outside appearances went, he was believably a female. Nothing weird-looking about him, like maybe he just liked to cross-dress and stick rolled up balls of socks in his shirt for ornamental purposes. He was pretty damn convincingly a female, which made Dean wonder what _else_ had changed in the little sex switcharoo. You know, mechanically speaking. If all the right parts came with the car, or--what the hell, was Sam an innie or an outtie? That sort of thing that, etiquettely speaking, you couldn't just bust out and ask, no matter how curious you were.

I mean, where would it even _go_, anyway?

Dean shook his head to clear that disturbing thought--and the even more disturbing visual it produced--and put down his burger, no longer hungry. Okay, no need to be dramatic. He was still hungry. He popped a few fries into his mouth and said of his brother's lack of appetite, "Don't tell me: you're watching your figure?"

Sam managed a pitiful glare, sinking back into the bucket part of the seat. "I'm not hungry."

"If I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times... girls in the magazines don't always look like that--"

"Shut up. Please. Shut up," he whined, and Dean laughed. He couldn't help it. I mean, so he was being a cruel, sadistic bastard, but so what? What else was he supposed to do, sit there and discuss the unbalanced politics of unicorns and the most sparkley nail polish color or whatever girly crap was probably spreading through Sammy's mind at an alarming speed because his brother just so happened to be wearing the body of a woman? No. Hell no. Sam was Sam, and that meant, in true brotherhood fashion, that whether or not Sam liked it, he was getting harped on, end of story.

Ah, but the little guy did look pretty damn pathetic.

Sam slid a tired hand over his face (and that's another thing--no _way_ was Dean going to start thinking of him as a _her_. No friggin' way, not a chance in hell) and picked up his fork, poking at some ungodly heap of food on his plate of suspicious origin. "I just want this over with. I want to know what we're supposed to _do_. I feel like we're wasting time," he said, and it sounded so much like Sam, Dean had to look away to push down the anger that surged.

It still pissed him off just thinking about it; some stupid ass rookie mistake, letting Sam get blasted like that. Or whatever happened. It didn't matter. The point was, they were going to hunt down whatever sorry son-of-a-bitch did this to Sam and they were going to torch the hell out of it, and then, when they were through with that, maybe Dean would run over it a few times with his Impala, maybe--

Sam broke through the haze, looking worried. "Dean?" Hair in a mess, long, tangled strands stuck to Sam's cheek, his chin, the sides of his neck. Eyes too soft, too round, and his nose? It wasn't supposed to have that slow curve, it was supposed to be one long line and a sudden, sharp angle.

It was messed up. It was so messed up, and what was even more messed up than all of that was how easily this slender, powder-puff variation of his brother had slid and wormed its way into Dean's daily existence as smooth and sure as Sam had them some odd years ago.

With a tight smile, Dean picked up his burger again and repeated the only reassuring thing he could say: "We're working on it."

The thing was, he didn't sound so convincing.

___________

Under the pretense of filling the Impala up and then stopping off at the restroom, Dean had snuck around the gas station building, needing some serious back-up.

He pulled out his cellphone, punching in the number 2. Speeddial kicked in and technology started showing off, connecting him through to Bobby. While the line continued to ring on the other end, Dean snuck a glance around the gas station building to peer into the Impala at Sam, who was slumped in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead at nothing. He'd been doing that a lot--the slumping thing. It was like 1998 all over again, when Sam was a whiny, annoying, brat of a teenager that preferred to express his every opinion through varying degrees of sulking. God, how Dean had hated that. Understood it, on some primal level, but damn did it give him a few gray hairs before his time.

Bobby answered on the third ring, like he always did. "Yeah?"

"He's slipping."

"What'dya expect, your brother to prance around like the prom queen? Smarten up."

Dean gritted his teeth. Bobby was family, but he was that smart ass Uncle you hated to love, the one that your Dad would've whacked you across the back of your head if you would've sassed back to. It was still ingrained in him to repress the urge to snark, even though he was rapidly approaching adulthood at an alarming rate. "You said--"

"I did, so why don't you go take care of your brother and let me worry about reversin' things." Sensing Dean's hesitation, Bobby added, "Look, he probably needs you right now. And for God's sake, don't be insensitive."

"What? When am I insensitive?"

His answer was a grunt, then the hollow whine of the dial-tone.


	5. Chapter 5

Leaving Sam back at the motel--his preference, though Dean had admittedly been relieved--Dean set off, with Bobby's insistence, to dig deeper than they'd already done. 'Follow the trail, dumbass' had actually been Bobby's words, but whatever.

Richard Bronson was first on the list, because it was his mug in the tabloids that started all this. At the tender, blossoming age of 26, he was a mechanic, liked long walks on the beach, rescued puppies from puppy mills--in other words, according to the man himself, he didn't know what he did to 'deserve' being turned into a woman, but that it was an enlightening experience.

Like hell, Dean thought to himself, as he cracked open the driver door and stepped out of the Impala, closing it gently behind him. Fingering the magazine starring our boy Richard, he observed the run-down car garage where it had been quoted he worked at.

A portly-looking older man walked up, rubbing oil off his hands with a rag. "Can I help you?" His nametag said _Andy_.

"Is Richard around today?" Dean asked, rolling the magazine up and sticking it in a back pocket. "I need to talk to him. It's about dear ol' Aunt Gertrude."

Andy looked at him funny, but called, "Richard!" into the open garage. There were some scuffling noises, the sounds of tools being put down, and then the changed man himself was strolling into fresh air.

With another sidelong glance, almost as if he didn't trust Dean, Andy went and busied himself elsewhere, just as Richard and Dean were getting acquainted. "What can I help you with?" Andy asked, then looked behind Dean, at Dean's car. "Engine trouble? See it all the time with these models. My God, man, they're ancient. Almost makes me think we should euthanize automobiles, you know?" Before Dean could defend his girl and his girl's pristine condition, thank you very much, Richard was sliding his greasy, grubby paws all over her hood.

"No!" Dean cried, probably a little too quickly. The horrified tone probably didn't help either. Richard's hand stopped mid-air from actually popping the hood, which made Dean nearly let out a knee-buckling sigh of relief. "She's fine. She's got an attitude like you wouldn't believe, but believe me, she's fine."

The man looked a little wary, like maybe he thought Dean had a couple screws loose, but with a shrug he stepped away from the car. Good man. Smart man.

"Well then. What can I do you for?"

"I'm here about this." He pulled the magazine out of his pocket, holding it up for Richard to see. He didn't look embarrassed either, which was something. "You got ten minutes?"

Richard crossed his arms, building up some swagger. "Maybe I do. Maybe I don't. What's it to you?"

Dean resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Give some small town crooney a couple minutes in the limelight, and he thinks he's something big. "I'm with the Toronto Star. We caught wind of this scoop up North and the big boss sent me out to here to do a story. Guess that makes it your lucky day."

"Toronto?" Richard let out a low whistle. "That's pretty damn up there."

"You're telling me. What'dya say? You in? Because," he said, and he rolled the magazine back up and stuck it in his pocket again, "I've got two other guys selling me the same story. Maybe I'll just use one of them."

"No, no, I'm in, I'm... how much you say you were paying again?"

____________________________________

"How'd it happen?"

"Don't you need a tape recorder?"

Dean tapped knuckle with the side of his head. "It's like a steel trap. I've got it."

"I don't want to be mis-quoted now."

That was ignored. "So, how'd it happen? Bright flash of light? Some big, foreboding Earthquake and then, wham, you wake up a chick?"

Richard was staring at Dean like he thought Dean was nuts. Again. "Uh, no. I went to sleep. I woke up. My dick was gone. That's about it."

Well, alright, if you want to get technical. "You haven't pissed anybody off lately, have you? Made any deals with, I don't know, I'm just throwing it out there... the devil?"

He laughed. It rang fake. "I don't know what to tell you. I'm a nice guy. I don't piss people off."

Yeah, you're a real nice guy, you car euthanizing bastard, Dean thought to himself, but said out loud, "What about an ex-girlfriend? No nasty story about how she did you wrong?"

Richard looked like he was struggling to say something. "Well..."

Alright, finally. The meat of the story.

"There _was_ Charlotte," Richard said.

"Charlotte? Who's Charlotte?" The magazine hadn't mentioned her.

"She's my ex. She's like... this insane schitzo. You know what she said when she saw that feature they did on me? _Serves you right_. Who says that shit!? She's crazy, I'm telling you."

So there was an ex-girlfriend in the picture. That was potentially interesting. "And where does Charlotte work?" When Richard hesitated, Dean added, "It's for a follow-up."

He didn't look like he was so keen on forking over the information, but when Dean flashed him a reassuring smile, one you'd have to be damn dumb to trust, he gave in. "Name's Magique Mystic Salon." Dean's eyebrows jumped as he wrote it down. Richard caught it. "Yeah, I know. The hell kind of crud is that, right? For some place that paints your nails and does up your hair." He snorted. Here's where all that enlightenment must've come in, Dean thought dryly to himself. "Whatever," Richard said. "She's a bitch. When you see her, tell her me and Kathy say _hi._ That's her best friend, by the way. Nice, huh?"

Oh, you have got to be kidding. Dean gave him an empty smile, asking, "So how'd you... change back, I guess, or whatever the technical, politically correct term is."

Richard shrugged. "Couldn't tell you even if I wanted to. I woke up the next day--and, damn, dude, that one day was the hardest day of my _life_--and I was me again. First thing I did was put my hand down my pants and--"

"Check out the hardware. Got it. It said in that article you did--nice picture, by the way, you look, well... suitably remorseful, that's nice," Dean said, by way of sweetening things, and Richard ate it up with a spoon. "It said you performed some kinda spell--"

Richard waved him off. "Total B.S., man. I just told him what he wanted to hear. You know how it is. Really, all I did was wake up the next morning and, I mean, just like that, I was me again." Which really wasn't helpful at all, but it sounded like the truth.

Dean swiped up the paper he'd jotted the essentials on, thanking Richard for his time and oh-so-valuable information as he stood up to go .

"About," Richard said. "Ahem. The compensation."

"Oh, right. That. You'll get it in the mail."

Dean was heading for the car with Richard at his heels. "Wait, what does that mean? What mail?'

Pulling the driver's door shut behind him, Dean started the engine up. "Four to six weeks. Standard procedure. On behalf of the Toronto Star," he said, and he revved the engine a little, "I'd like to say that you are truly one-of-a-kind."

Richard was practically preening. The twerp.

----------------------------------------------------------------

"How long were you and Richard dating?"

Charlotte, as it turned out, was a pretty decent-looking babe. Hair a little fried from too much of that color dye crap, but no doubt about it, she was a looker. Her blonde hair was pulled up into a ponytail, stray, rebellious bangs poking every which way. She looked like she could hold her own, maybe raise a little hell.

"Too long. I don't know. 7 or 8 months, I'd say."

Dean did the professional hemming and hawing thing, like this was important information and he needed to sit there and seriously mull it over. Plus, it gave him time to check out her ass while she bent over and sorted through some box of haircare supplies.

He'd pulled up to a mostly empty parking lot, which wasn't really a parking lot but an unpaved square of land that--even being no more than tall weeds and a flattened section of dirt--had seen better days. No surprises, either, when he'd strolled in and been the only one not getting paid by the hour to be there.

Charlotte had agreed he could hang around as she went through the motions of cleaning up her station. Gave him some load about having a client in the next hour, but Dean mostly thought that was just a bunch of bull to get him in and out of there as quickly as possible.

Straightening, she looked him square in the eye. "I'm sorry. I just don't know why you're here. We broke up a while ago."

"I'm sorry," he offered by way of deflection.

"I'm not. Richard was a jerk. He was loud and rude and, God, he had the worst sense of humor. Toilet humor." She cringed in disgust, while Dean repressed a smirk as one of his favorite crude jokes floated to some mental surface. "And then I saw that stupid article in that magazine and the first thing that runs through my head, the _first_ thing I think is, _Serves him right._"

Dean cleared his throat. "He said."

"Did he? I'm surprised. Usually anything I ever told him went in one ear and out... well. You know how it goes."

"So he wasn't a good boyfriend?"

"That's an understatement. He was lousy."

"Anything else? Like, he have any enemies you know about? Anybody who might've wanted to see him..." Dean searched his wordbank, but kept coming up with things he didn't want to outright say: humiliated, horrified, disturbed for the rest of his natural life.

She filled in for him. "Get a bitter taste of justice?" She shrugged, picking at a hairbrush. "I guess. Ex-girlfriends, you know? But, like, did he piss off some drug lord and have the Sopranos chasing at his heels? Please. Richard's small town. He drives a banged up red pick-up truck and listens to Kenny Chesney. He may _think_ he's a big shot, but he's not. He doesn't even drink."

Dean processed that. So he was a pretty straight-and-narrow kind of guy, give or take his lacking in the romance department. It wasn't making any sense.

Charlotte set down the hairbrush, looking like she wanted to say something. "You know, it's almost ironic." She smiled to herself, shaking her head. She was thinking about something, rolling it over in her head, and Dean wanted that thought shared.

"What was?" he asked, probing.

Like she had forgotten he was there, she looked up sharply. "Oh. Nothing. Just that... well, I was talking to this girl at the bar. It was one of those first weekends after Richard dumped me and I was still all righteous and insane about it and, I don't know, I guess maybe it was a little hard."

Dean offered up some nonjudgmental sympathy. "Of course."

"And it's not like I was drunk or anything. I just had a beer. And then there was this girl there, at the bar, and I started talking to her about one thing or another, and pretty soon we're talking about Richard and how he never treated me right. Those were _her_ words. I guess it seems pretty crazy now, looking back at it, but at the time, I felt so... validated, you know? Talking about it. And I said something, like, _I wish he could feel exactly what I felt_. Something totally stupid you only say when you're buzzed and trading stories with someone you barely know. And then there's that article and it's like... oh, man. That's twisted. That's so twisted, but it's so... perfect, you know? Too bad it didn't really happen, though. Wow, could you imagine?" She laughed.

Dean cleared his throat again. "Right. Well." He kind of bowed out of there. "Thanks. For being so helpful with the, uh, background information."

She looked skeptical now. "What'd you say this was for again?"

"Toronto Star. Canada's favorite informative sucker magazine. We'll send you a copy."

Then he was out the door, heading for the Impala, the twitchings of things lining up and fitting into place rattling inside his head, but he had two more stops to go, two more of these Stan-to-Jan stories to make sense of things.

***


	6. Chapter 6

"They all line up."

For the first time since Dean had seen Sam in someone elses skin, Sam looked hopeful. "What?" he asked.

"Me and Jessica Alba's horoscopes. What do you think? These!" He tossed the magazines that were now weathered-looking from the wear and tear Dean had put them through all afternoon at Sam, who was sitting at the tiny motel table. As Sam stared at the pictures of the men on the covers, Dean explained, "Turns out, I wasn't far off the mark. Dude, there are some seriously hellbent women out there."

Sam shot him a _You've got to be kidding me_ look that, wearing the face he was wearing, made him feel slightly reproached.

"Guy and girl are dating," Dean further went on, shaking off the admonished feeling, "and guy ends up being a real dickwad. No surprise there. Girl spills her sob story to some random but conveniently available ear and then, bam, dude ends up in bizarro world, where suddenly he's gotta squat every time Mother Nature starts painting visuals of waterfalls."

Sam looked uncomfortable. Of course, Dean realized belatedly, Sam was living in that bizarro world, and good sweet christ, never mind the squatting.

"That doesn't explain what happened to me."

"No, it doesn't," Dean agreed. "Unless you've got some secrets in that shady collegiate past you might want to share. Now would be a good time."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Nothing like this."

"Yeah. I thought about it. You're not the type. Besides," he added, "you've only dated, what, two chicks your whole life? Definitely not the type."

"Whatever."

Dean flashed a smile and grabbed his phone.

_____________________________________________

"What do we got?"

"Vengeance demon," Bobby answered. "Nasty things. And guess who their main clientele is?"

"Oh, I'm guessing some seriously scorned chicks, the way the dominoes keep falling."

"Bingo."

"So what happened? Because, believe me, Sam hasn't scored lately, let alone scorned. I'd know."

"You're a dumbass. What you're dealing with is a group of very specific demons. _Don't_ piss them off. Now, you come across the thing, don't happen to get stupid and start makin' wishes."

"Why would I do that?"

"Your brother is a girl, you really want me to answer that?" Point made. "That's how they operate. Someone, usually a female, but I'm not bettin' the house on it, says some stupid wish out loud to 'em, and next thing they know, they're dealing with some demon's idea of a good deed. Twisted, _never_ accurate."

"Sounds creepy. Little-girl-in-the-TV creepy."

"It is. Don't wish. Don't even _think_ about wishin'."

"I'm not exactly the wish-on-a-star type, so."

Dean heard Bobby sigh through the phoneline. "Let me handle it. I'll start makin' calls."


End file.
